Britain's Battle With Booze

In restricting alcohol, as in war, the U.K. need only ask: 'What would Churchill do?'

By

Daniel Freedman

Updated Jan. 25, 2010 6:06 a.m. ET

"Always remember Clemmie, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."—Winston Churchill to his wife Clementine.

Churchill may never have played "dentist's chair"—a drinking game where various alcoholic beverages are squirted directly into a person's mouth—but he probably would have been good at it. Perhaps Britain's most famous drinker ("When I was younger I made it a rule never to take a strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast," Churchill once said), it's unlikely that he would have been impressed with the Labour government's declared war on booze.

Under proposals just introduced in the British Parliament, "all-you-can-drink" promotions and speed drinking competitions would be banned from bars, and other measures aimed at stopping Brits getting drunk would be instituted. These proposals follow a December parliamentary report that warned of three million Britons addicted to alcohol.

Not that the Labour party leader, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is likely to have needed much persuading to declare war on alcohol. He's got a reputation for being a Puritan. Traditionally Chancellors of the Exchequer have a strong drink in hand while presenting their budget to the House of Commons. It's a parliamentary privilege that Chancellors from Benjamin Disraeli (brandy and water) to Geoffrey Howe (gin and tonic) to Kenneth Clarke (whiskey) have embraced. But when Mr. Brown was Chancellor during Tony Blair's premiership, he waived the right and drank water.

The architects of the anti-drinking proposals view alcohol as one of society's greatest mischief-makers. It is blamed for everything from crime (people are both more likely to attack, and are less able to defend themselves) to economic inactivity (people miss work because of hangovers) to unwanted pregnancies (alcohol makes the wrong people appear attractive). So much so that it sometimes seems that the only "evil" that alcohol hasn't yet been blamed for is global warming.

That would be a stretch, even for Al Gore, as in fact a case can be made that drinking actually helps combat climate change. As people who consume lots of alcohol are not allowed to drive, drinking therefore leads to an increase in car pooling and walking. Indeed if all countries in the world pledged that their citizens would follow Churchill's tradition of having a drink before lunch, carbon omissions would drastically fall. For some reason this point didn't get a mention during the recent climate change conference in Copenhagen.

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It is of course true that some people abuse alcohol and cause problems for others. The traditional way of dealing with such troublemakers is to impose stricter penalties on their misconduct; not to penalize everyone else. You don't ban cars because some people engage in drag racing. Arguments against restricting drinking are numerous: In terms of effectiveness, if people are not allowed to play their drinking games in bars, they'll just do it at home; from an economic perspective, trying to cut consumption, especially during an economic downturn, is unwise; and most importantly, from an individual rights standpoint, one of the pillars of a free society is the freedom to make bad choices.

A case can also be made that banning alcohol can cause wider national problems. Britain need only look to the example of the two superpowers, the United States and Russia. When the U.S. instituted Prohibition in 1920, the Great Depression and the rise of the Mob followed. When Russia first tried banning vodka in 1914, the Russian Empire collapsed three years later. And when Mikhail Gorbachev launched an anti-alcohol campaign in 1985, six years later the Soviet Union collapsed.

Some of Britain's leaders do understand the benefits that drinking can bestow. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, for example, has in the past extolled drinking a couple of pints of beer during the day. "I find it gives me wings after lunch," he said. It is true that alcohol can give some people inspiration. For others it can cause a headache or prompt a nap. But whatever the immediate effect, the reality more often than not is that whoever is in the "dentist's chair" one evening will be fine the next morning. As Churchill once responded to a female Member of Parliament who (rightly) accused him of being drunk: "Yes madam I'm drunk, and you're ugly, but in the morning I'll be sober and you'll still be ugly."

Mr. Freedman is director of policy analysis and communications at the Soufan Group, a strategic consultancy.

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